By BAKER ELLIS / Sports Reporter

NORTH SHELBY- On a Jan. 13 contest between the Jaguars from Spain Park and the Mountain Brook Spartans that marked the end of the first regular season for bowling in the state of Alabama, the Jags completed a very successful inaugural campaign. They finished the regular season at a perfect 9-0.

Bowling is qualified as an emerging sport this year under AHSAA ruling. This means that this season, teams have been able to determine the format for each match. At the end of the season, there will be meetings with coaches and AHSAA officials to determine what format works best, which will lead to a ruling by the AHSAA sometime before the start of the 2015-16 season as to how all matches will be formatted from there on out, according to coaches in the area.

In this final contest, the format was one familiar to Spain Park, with the total pin count being tallied from three Baker games and one individual game from all five bowlers on each team. The Baker format simply means all five bowlers participate in that game, where a different bowler bowls each frame. The Jaguars won the match by exactly 500 pins, “which is quite a lot” according to Spain Park head coach Stephen Hobbs.

Ryan Kendall, a senior at Spain Park who currently holds a scholarship offer to bowl at Wichita State, according to Hobbs, was the high bowler on the evening with a score of 234.

The total pin count for Spain Park was 1,482, which was the highest of the year under the three Baker, one regular game format, according to Hobbs.

Spain Park will be participating in the Thompson Tournament at Oak Mountain Lanes on Jan. 16 for their postseason play.